


Rainflowers In Return

by raendown



Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Hanahaki Disease, M/M, Y'all know I'm a slut for that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-12
Updated: 2018-11-12
Packaged: 2019-08-22 21:44:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16605986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raendown/pseuds/raendown
Summary: Naruto isn't surprised when he coughs up the first petals.





	Rainflowers In Return

_i. Tsubaki – yellow camellia – longing_

Naruto sort of wasn’t surprised to see the first petals. He was more surprised that Ino’s ramblings had stuck enough for him to identify them. The soft buttery yellow of the petals he’d just picked off his tongue were cheerful, happy, and he supposed it was kind of a happy feeling to know that what he felt was truly a feeling of love.

Someone knocked on the bathroom door and called for him to hurry up. Naruto considered keeping the delicate pieces for a moment but ultimately decided there was no point. He would only lose them and more would come soon anyway. They rushed circles around the bowl when he flushed them, nodding apologetically to the man waiting for the toilet as he rushed back in to the restaurant’s dining room.

“What took you so long?” Sakura demanded, grumpy at having to move for him to retake his seat on the inside of the bench.

“Nothing. I just had a bit of a coughing fit.” He paired the lie with a brilliant grin and Sakura swallowed it easily just as he’d known she would. Everyone said he was a bad liar but how would they know when he so rarely bothered to lie? No one else seemed to notice anything out of the ordinary. Naruto spent the rest of their meal with one hand clenched under the table, fingers tracing the spot on his palm where he had held the shredded pieces of a Tsubaki flower while his mind drifted away to the one person who hadn’t made it to dinner.

 

_ii. Kuroyuri – Kamchatka lily –_ _love, curse_

Purple was his favorite color. Most people would probably think it was orange but just because he knew that color looked good on him didn’t mean it was his favorite.

On the other hand, just because purple was his favorite color didn’t mean he wanted to be awake at three in the morning vomiting slim petals, even if they were the most gorgeous shade he’d ever seen. They curled in the sink and fluttered delicately as though they weren’t spotted with blood from his lungs.

Right next to the sink, watching over him from the windowsill, a young man in an ANBU uniform sat with his legs crossed and his head titled bird-like to one side. He hadn’t said a word since arriving, for which Naruto was grateful. Now was not the time for probing questions that he wouldn’t know how to answer anyway.

A groan escaped him as he finally finished heaving and slid to the floor. The ANBU on his windowsill leaned across the tiny space and plucked a single petal from the sink.

“Love and a curse.” His voice echoed from behind the mask. “Or perhaps that love _is_ a curse.”

“Shut up Sai,” Naruto growled.

“The Hokage has a mission he wishes to send you on. Should I tell him you’re unwell?”

“No, I’m fine. Please…don’t tell Kakashi-sensei.”

He pretended not to feel that blank gaze drilling in to him from behind the mask. Eventually Sai left and he allowed himself to slump down to the ground, trying not to think about how his friend had almost been right. Love itself was not a curse – but oh how cursed he felt by love.

 

_iii. Anemone – white anemone – sincere_

The irony of it all was that he was hardly suffering in silence. Anyone could tell you that Naruto was not to type to stay quiet about his thoughts or feelings. The moment he’d realized he felt something for Kakashi he had gone to the man and blushed his way through a fumbling confession. It was Kakashi’s reaction that brought on the flowers.

Truth be told he hadn’t really expected anything more than to be let down gently. But to have his feelings dismissed as nothing more than misplaced affection for a father figure – a _father figure_ – that had really cut him. He might not be the most intelligent person in the whole world but he was certainly smart enough to tell the difference between loving a friend and falling in love. And he was certainly mature enough to recognize the feeling of heartbreak that Kakashi would think so lowly of him.

Catching his breath after a coughing fit, leaning back against the tree he’d nearly fallen out of, Naruto lifted the anemone blossom to his nose and breathed in the fresh scent half buried under vomit and blood. A full blossom could only mean that his condition was worsening but Naruto couldn’t find it in him to worry. Kurama had been restless in his belly lately, prowling the edges of his cage, silently leaking chakra in an effort to heal the host that kept him locked away, but it was an effort wasted. Naruto supposed he would need to say his goodbyes soon.

It should have been a sadder thought.

He was mostly just grateful that he would have a chance to say goodbye like so many of his precious people hadn’t.

 

_iv. Ayame – iris – loyalty_

Pakkun didn’t look too impressed to find him less than a mile from home but two days late for his expected return. Naruto offered him an apologetic smile without bothering to suck away the blood that covered his teeth. Then he turned his head and heaved until several misshapen flowers forced their way up his throat, drifting down to rest on the forest floor where they almost looked like they could belong if not for being so out of season.

He felt sort of bad when Pakkun’s flat look turned to worry but there wasn’t much he could do to soothe the ninken. There wasn’t much he could do to soothe himself at this point either.

“Who are you so loyal to?” the dog asked him. Without thinking, Naruto replied.

“Heh, who are _you_?”

In his life he had regretted a handful of things but those words he regretted most. It wasn’t that he’d forgotten how smart Pakkun was, just that he still hadn’t learned to think before he spoke a lot of the time.

“Don’t tell him,” he whispered.

“You know I’m going to.”

Naruto plucked an iris from the ground and closed it in his fist, wishing he could wilt so easily. He had a feeling he wasn’t going to like what was coming.

 

_v. Saboten – cactus – lust, sex_

For being a doctor famed for her bedside manner, Sakura sure did pack a lot of judgement in to her stare.

“I can’t control what flowers come out,” Naruto gasped as she settled down on the roof of the hospital with him cradled in her arms. His best friend snorted and kicked open the roof access.

“You can control what you’re thinking about.”

“Well I’m _dying_. Just let me think nice thoughts, alright?”

She didn’t respond to that but he felt bad when he caught a glimmer under florescent lights, the first tear breaking free to roll silently down her cheek.

“You’re just lucky Pakkun came to me first, you know.”

He knew. Just as both of them knew that there was nothing she could do now but ease his passing.

 

_vi. Tsubaki – red camellia – in love, perishing with grace_

“At least this time I am only mostly too late.”

He would know that voice anywhere. Naruto fought against the heaviness of his eyes, his breath little more than a happy wheeze when he felt fingers gently tracing the shape of his jaw. He would know those callouses anywhere too.

Kakashi was still wearing the robes of his office when Naruto managed to slit his eyes open, devouring the welcome sight of the man he’d fallen in love with. The smile he tried to make was cracked and breaking around the edges of the red blossoms stuck between his lips. Without surgery the roots would kill him in the next twenty-four hours. With surgery he would never feel the emotion of love again.

Anyone who couldn’t guess the option he would choose was an idiot who probably hadn’t known him for more than five minutes.

“I didn’t really believe what Pakkun told me until I came here and saw you myself. Just like I didn’t really believe you when you first said something. Would–? No, I guess it doesn’t matter if I’m sorry or not. That doesn’t fix the pain, does it?”

Naruto lay still and breathed through the flowers, thought about plucking one to give as a gift and then thought the better of it. He didn’t want to cause the man any more guilt than he was clearly already feeling. But, really, it wasn’t either of their faults. No one can control how they feel.

“Even so”–Kakashi straightened in his chair–“I intend to make it up to you in whatever way I can. Starting with this.”

He leaned forward and Naruto could not have guessed what he meant to do.

 

_vii. Keshi (shiro) – white poppy – rejoice_

Red petals rained from his lips, the hanahaki curse released by Kakashi soft, sincere kiss. More and more blossoms poured forth until, ironically, it looked more like he was lying in a pool of blood than as if he’d just had another man confess to returning his love.

The final blossom, the last to fall and the only one not to wither away the moment he took his first full breath in what felt like a lifetime, was a delicate poppy with pure white petals that made him laugh even before he registered what it meant. Naruto scooped it up and presented it to the man at his bedside, the one he had longed for without silence and yet without being heard for almost too long.

“Look a little happier, huh?” He grinned. “Now you get to kiss me again!”

Kakashi did not laugh. He did smile. And he did kiss Naruto again.

Then again and again, the next day and the next, on their anniversary and their wedding, and on every day they tended the flowers they kept in the garden out front of their home.

**Author's Note:**

> _Rainflowers - I love you back, I must atone for my sins, I will never forget you_


End file.
